Generally, most drivers would be very much appreciated if he or she can have the ability to aware of each and every obstacle in his/her moving track of vehicle for improving driving safety, which is especially true when the driver is maneuvering a vehicle in his/her visual blind spots for parking or passing through a narrow road section. Nowadays, thanks to the rapid development in electronic technology, many automobile manufacturers had answered such desire by starting to install electric sensors in their products. There are two types of sensors that are most commonly used, one of which is referred as the distance sensor such as ultrasonic sensors, infrared sensors, millimeter wave sensors and radar sensor; and the other is referred as the image sensor such as CCD and CMOS. The distance sensor is usually being applied as a unidirectional obstacle detector for issuing an alarm for alerting the condition that there is an obstacle blocking the moving track of the vehicle on which it is installed, and is mostly seen in adaptive cruise control system, car reversing radar aid system, and so on. Moreover, the image sensor is used as a wide-range visual assistant in lane/vehicle identification system, rear view camera system, or blind spot detection system, and so on. It is noted that if there is a vehicle maneuvering system capable of proving a driver with sufficient information relating to the dynamic moving trajectory of the vehicle and the distances measured between the vehicle and the obstacles in its moving track, the driver can drive safely under the guidance of the vehicle maneuvering system with the minimum chance of collision.
There are already many driving assistant methods available. One of which is a parking assistant apparatus disclosed in China, Pat. No. CN179378. The aforesaid parking assistant apparatus is advantageous in that: it can identify a parking space rapidly and with high precision, and thus it can help alleviate the driver's sufferings relating to parking. The aforesaid parking assistant apparatus first use a rear view camera to capture an image of a parking space where the drive is intended to park; and then the system will identify a parking zone on the captured image to be used for planning a parking trajectory to assist the driver. In detail, the aforesaid parking assistant apparatus includes: a detection unit, capable of detecting information relating the moving of the vehicle; a storage unit, for storing information relating to the detected moving history of the vehicle; a parking space evaluation unit, capable of performing a search according to the information relating to the detected moving history of the vehicle stored in the storage unit for obtaining pseudo-target parking spaces; and a parking space identification unit, for identifying a parking zone form the pseudo-target parking spaces.
Another such prior-art method is a driver aiding system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,006,127, which includes: a displaying section, arranged at a position that can be looked at from a driver's seat of a vehicle; an image picking-up section, for picking up an image of a rear portion of the vehicle containing at least a part of a hitch that is provided to the rear portion of the vehicle; and an image processing section for causing the displaying section to display a synthesized image that is obtained by image-processing an image picked up by the image picking-up section. A hitch image of own vehicle in addition to an image of a trailed vehicle and an image of a destination coupler are displayed on a screen of the displaying section. As a result, the relative positional relationship between the hitch and the destination coupler can be checked on the screen and thus the hitch coupling operation can be facilitated.